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Monday, December 9, 2013

I have been wanting a new dining room table, but couldn't seem to find one that I liked or that would be the perfect size for my awkward shaped dining room/eat in kitchen. I have been following Ana White's projects for quite some time, but haven't braved doing any of them yet. I have never done any kind of wood project before, with the exception of helping hubby hold something while he nailed it or something, so this was a whole new element for me!

I decided on Ana White's Farmhouse table. It was the perfect length, however I did adjust the width a bit, I wanted my table a bit wider than hers. I actually used three different tutorials from Ana White's website for this table as I liked different features in the Farmhouse Table, the Updated Farmhouse Table (using a pocket hole drill), and another from a guest post.

Due to the lack of the lumber type/size that I wanted to use at our local HD, I ended up using 1 2x10 for the center and 2 2x8's on both sides of that and a 2x8 for the breadboard ends. This project was much easier than I expected it to be, and I am now in love with wood projects! The hardest part of this table was the same as everyone else said it would be, notching out the legs for the stretcher and apron. Aside from that this was pretty simple.

What the table top looks like on the underside with all of the pocket holes.

Hubby helped me with the table, I planned to do it all myself but it was very nice having help. I had never used most of the tools that were needed for this so help was a must for my own safety, ha ha!

We picked wood with some nice size knots in it to give it plenty of personality.

Sanding the table, and sanding the table, and sanding the table.

Starting the tedious job of staining.

Putting the 2nd coat of stain on.

Sanding after the 2nd coat of stain.

3rd and final coat of stain on and drying.

Close up of the bottom of the table, we only put one coat on the bottom and love how the grain of the wood came out.

For the finish we went with MinWax Jacobean. The color came out MUCH darker than we anticipated, but I am so glad that it did!

Dining room before.

Dining room after.

Close up of the stain/table top.

We have a lot more plans for the dining room, here is my Pinterest board of my plans for the dining room! We plan to make the matching bench to go along with the table for one side and 4 parsons chairs on the other side of the table. I am still trying to decide the fabric for the parsons chairs, and find some chairs for cheap to refinish and reupholster with it.

Today I get to tell you about two books that I was given the opportunity to review, both by Heather A. Kendall. God's Unfolding Story of Salvation, a Bible study, and A Tale of Two Kingdoms, an accompanying book to go with the Bible study.

God's Unfolding Story of Salvation is a 38 lesson Bible Study for older teens and adults. This is meant to be studied at your pace. I think this would be great for a group Bible Study, personally. I have not done many Bible studies in my life and I would have preferred to study this along with a group to talk this over and dig deeper into the thoughts of others, and myself. This is a really neat study as it's not topic centered, but rather goes into a deeper look from Genesis all the way to Revelations. This book gives you a small tidbit of information, you will need your Bible heavily for this study, and you do the research to dig deeper and study on God's Salvation. I actually chose not to do the Bible Study just yet, as I want to start it in January and use it for a full year and really get to dig into this study, I am excited about starting this in January and will certainly update once I've been using it longer.

A Tale of Two Kingdoms is an accompanying book to go with the Bible Study, or can be read alone. It doesn't go right along with the Bible Study, but is a great resource to use with it. This is a very in depth book, and I would not recommend it for someone just starting to dig deeper into their faith and the Bible. This is certainly for someone with a lot of experience with Bible Studies and a good sense of the Bible, or to be used along with Gods Unfolding Story of Salvation with a group Bible Study.

You can purchase these books from Heather Kendall's website by clicking here. You can purchase the Bible Study for $22 which includes shipping and the accompanying book for $23 which also includes shipping.

Heather Kendall has done a wonderful job writing these books and I definitely encourage you to head on over to the Mosaic Review page and read the other reviewers thoughts on these books to see if they would be a good fit for your Bible Study or a great Christmas present for someone special in your life!

Friday, November 29, 2013

My Little Pony: Party of One is an interactive app for preschool aged children. Twinkle Toes is 9 years old and is a HUGE MLP (My Little Pony) fan!

When I saw the opportunity to review this app, I was all for it! This app goes along with one of the MLP episodes, Party of One, which Twinkle Toes has seen multiple times, like every other episode. It's really cute how the book app goes along with the episide. Not only is it a book though, it's interactive where the children can click on different things on the pages. Your kids will love to hear their favorite Characters come to life in this app! There are different sight words in the story and at the end of the book there is a "Sight Word Round Up" for the kids to click on each the picture and it will tell the word.

This app, of course, if not my 9 year olds level, but she still had fun reading it. It's a running joke in our house that Twinkle Toes is like Pinkie Pie. Not only is she full of energy, but she LOVES to plan parties and have a good time, just like Pinkie Pie!

You can check out a video of the app here. And you can hop on over to purchase the app from the app store for $2.99

I definitely think that your preschool aged children will have a blast with this app!

You can head on over to the Mosaic Review page to see what my fellow reviewers thought of this as well!

Friday, November 8, 2013

So, it's been a little over a week since I gave up Facebook and I'm going to have to admit that I am loving it! I will say, due to a couple of things that I am involved in I did have to have a Facebook account and I was making my poor hubby's phone blow up with notifications from when I commented on things that a lot of others had to comment on also, from his account. So I created an account strictly for these things that I was required to have a FB account for. I have one friend on there, my hubby of course, and that's how it's going to stay. So, with that being said, if you are a friend of mine and have noticed my face pop up on Facebook, I promise you that I am not ignoring you and I didn't close my personal account to avoid any of you, really!

Over the last week I've had a lot of family time, I've noticed that I've gone to bed early, woken up before my alarm every day, my shoulder has been feeling better, and my attitude from more sleep has been better. I have had time to spend quality time with my precious family, gotten tasks done around the house, and have gotten a lot more done at work!

I think I told you last week that I was making a new dining room table, this is the one! I planned to do this all on my own, but quickly learned that I must have someone watch over me, I didn't even know how to change the drill bit in the drill (I know how now!!!). Hubby and I got the legs of the table cut last weekend, and this weekend I am going to be working on putting the legs together and making my cuts for the stretcher board and the side aprons. We have decided on a stain color for it, it's called Jacobean, it's really pretty and makes me think of coffee! Who doesn't love a dining room table color that reminds you of coffee!!

Last weekend we had to go out and buy a new freezer, it's hunting season here in Georgia and hubby brought home a nice size deer and we had no room for the meat. Certainly no argument from me that we had to buy a new chest freezer for that reason. Hubby made delicious venison cube steak the other night for dinner and I have decided that venison is my favorite meat. Doesn't hurt that it's super healthy for you either! I'll have to post a pic once we get it back from the taxidermist, we decided to have him mounted to put him up in our living room, because who doesn't love a deer staring at them all the time, ha ha ha!

Monday, Twinkle Toes and I went to the park for Homeschool park day, no one else was there that day so we took advantage of the beautiful scenery and took some more photos. I am amazed every day at just how beautiful fall is! Living in Florida almost all my life sure has made me cherish the fall season! My allergies have been crazy the last few weeks, but that's ok, at least the scenery has been majestic! The trees are all losing their leaves now and they will soon be dormant, but the upside to the trees being dormant is that we have a seasonal mountain view from our house, I can see some bonfires coming up soon, wrapped up in blankets in front of the fire and fun family memories being made!

This girl seems like she is growing faster than I can even blink. She will be 10 in a few months and one of my two reasons to slow down life and enjoy it!

Sunday, November 3, 2013

As a stay at home mom, homeschool parent, work from home mom, and house wife I have a lot of things to do. One thing I don't do is leave my house very much. I am not a parent that chooses to enroll my child in a ton of things and cause our schedule to be so busy that it stresses us out. We all three prefer a laid back schedule and more spur of the moment stuff. Now, because we are home all the time (and I work a full time job from home) I am on the computer at least 8 hours a day, I am on Facebook well over 1/2 of that. Yep, over 4 hours a day on Facebook. I don't know how this happened, I guess just over time. We moved to a new state last year and I started being on more to stay connected with my friends from our old state, then the beginning of this year we bought a house in a new city and I am on Facebook to stay connected with our friends and life in that city. Somewhere in these moves I became addicted to Facebook.

So, I have decided to deactivate my Facebook account for the month of November, and possibly longer depending on how November goes. (I closed my Google+ and Twitter accounts a few weeks ago)

Typically during the Month of November I do "30 days of what I'm thankful for" posts on Facebook. Day 1-Thankful for... and I do that each day throughout the month of November. Since August I have been praying about this and thinking about this and fighting myself about this, it's been a hard decision and I've even gotten some not so nice remarks from friends about it!!

Instead of 30 day of thankfulness posts, that typically just about all of them have to do with my wonderful family, I will be deactivating my Facebook account and spending the time to reflect on my life without Facebook.

(ok I wrote the above post last week, and it's November 3rd already so I'll update)

I deactivated my Facebook account late Halloween night. The 1st was very weird not logging on to see what everyone was up to, and it was even more odd not to post photos to FB throughout my day. But, it's the 3rd now and honestly I'm not even missing it too much. I was expecting to have major Facebook withdrawal symptoms and to have a hard time adjusting to life without FB, but it's been a nice change.

Today hubby, Twinkle Toes, and I went out and found a beautiful place to take some fall photos. We had a blast! The picture below is of Twinkle Toes exploring while out taking photos today, I loved this photo, it was one of my favorites of the day!

After taking photos we stopped by the local hardware store and got some lumber for a project we are working on. We are making a new dining room table using these plans from Ana White's website. (I am a bit obsessed with her website, it's pretty awesome for the do-it-yourself person!

So, that's what's going on in our world these last few days and what is coming up! I'll be trying to update the blog more often now that you can't keep up with me in other areas of social media!

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Today I get to tell you about a wonderful book that we got a chance to review over the last few weeks. A Light for my Path by Davis Carman, published by Apologia.

A Light for my Path is a children's ABC book written with a beautiful Biblical view based on Psalms 119. Davis Carman has done a wonderful job reinforcing the alphabet by creating a full spread of two pages for each of the 27 letters of The English alphabet showing the letters in capital and lowercase and with a full page spread photo of each letter, with either a plant or animal to correspond with each letter from A-Z.

The author has given instruction on how to use this book and the history behind why Psalms 119 was chosen for this book. Since Twinkle Toes is older, we read this together and from the first few sentences she was drawn in to every single word.

The second half of this book teaches us the full 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet and has Psalms 119 printed throughout the pages from Psalms 119:1 through Psalms 119:176. We read through the entire book when we read it, but again Twinkle Toes is older, if your child is smaller you might want to read through the English alphabet each time you read it and a different Hebrew letter each time you read it together. This will give you a chance to talk about the verses that have been read and more of a chance for smaller minds to pay attention and take in what you have read. You can of course read this however you like and what is best for your children :)

Twinkle Toes very much enjoys reading this book, and has even started to read it to our animals. Here is Twinkle Toes reading A Light for my Path to our dog Cupcake. Our animals get a lot of reading aloud done to them, Twinkle Toes loves to read to the animals and even makes school work for them to do, because the animals must learn too!

We have absolutely loved reading this book together and will use it for many years to come!

You can head on over to Apologia's website to see more about this book and purchase A Light for my Path. At a price of $14 I find this book a great price and another valuable book to add to our home library!

curious what my fellow reviewers thought of A Light for my Path? You can read their reviews right Here!

Thursday, October 3, 2013

eduPad has created a fun way to learn on your tablet or smart phone, iTooch is an app for learning Math, Language Arts, Science, Health, Music, and even French!

Available for Apple, Windows and it's now available for Android devices!

I will have to say, I was happy to hear that it was available for Windows phones/tablets, I have a Windows phone and have a hard time finding some of my favorite apps on there. For the purpose of this review I used my iPad so we would have the bigger screen to see/use it.

When asked to do this review I was actually pretty excited because I happened to already have this app for Twinkle Toes on my iPad! I like to keep educational stuff on there for when we are out and about so that she's not just playing Angry Birds all the time!!

When logging in you chose what subject you want to work on that session and it will bring you to your progress chart, you can only play a certain number of levels in the free version, they do have free and paid versions of the apps, we only used the free versions. (it takes a lot for me to actually purchase an app, I have only purchases two apps in my over 4 years of having a smart phone!)

This app is really neat because it's fun, colorful, has fun sounds, and is easy to use! If you get the answer correct you get a check mark, if the answer is incorrect it gives you the correct answer.

I find myself when I am bored logging in and playing the games myself, nothing wrong with continuing education as an adult, and it's funny how many simple things that you learn as a child that you forget as an adult. (I get answers wrong often, ha ha, it's like that show Are you Smarter than a 5th grader)

PROS

-Easy to use
-The graphics are great!! (Lets face it, if it's not pretty to look at it's probably not going to get used, right??)
-The have some free stuff to use to see if you will really like it

CONS

-Cost of the paid apps- They run from $4.99 and up for each subject of each grade! If I were to purchase an app, I would prefer to purchase the app and not have to make an additional purchase each time I want to use something else in the app.

That's really the only con that I could come up with, it's a really fun app for adults and kids!

Curious if this is the app for your family but not yet ready to make the plunge? Head on over to the Mosaic Review page and see what the others reviewers thought of iTooch!

Friday, September 27, 2013

Hi everyone! Wow, it's been a while since I've blogged, huh? Well, a quick recap on me before I begin, I had shoulder surgery 5 1/2 weeks ago for a torn bicep tendon, I am doing much better now and hope to be back to my active self soon, Dr says a couple more months though :( Can't take chances of messing up what he fixed! So that's where I've been and hopefully I'll be on here a lot more now that I am feeling a lot better!!

Day of Surgery-Not looking the best, huh? Pain meds are NOT my friend!

1 week after surgery, I don't look like a zombie anymore, yay!!

Ok, enough about me, on to why we are here today, another fun review!!!

MATH MAMMOTH

Math Mammoth is a homeschool curriculum for grades 1-6. They offer a large variety of math options not only for homeschoolers, but also for those in public and private school to touch up and for extra review in areas needing it.

Blue Series
The Blue series is chosen by topic, from addition all the way to algebra. These books are small and for review of specific areas and priced nicely from $2 up to $7. You do get package deals if you purchase the entire set of them.

I could see the Blue Series being very nice when your child is struggling with one area of math, long division, multiplication, telling time, etc. You would simply pick the book that is the area where your kiddo is having trouble and it's nice and easy to purchase and download it to print out at home or at a local print shop.

Light Blue Series
This is the series that I reviewed. (Even though my daughter is in 4th grade, I chose to review the 3rd grade math curriculum, I thought that it would be great to be able to go back to through the year when she is struggling to give her encouragement and be able to do work that she knows how to do.)

The Light Blue Series is a full math curriculum for an entire year. You purchase the books A, B, and the supportive manuals, or you can purchase them all together. We got the full set for our review and there is a LOT of stuff in this package, 360+ pages PLUS the supportive manuals which has extra practice and all of the answer keys! The price for the full download, everything you need for a full year of math, is pretty affordable at $34. If you do not want to purchase the download, they do offer the printed books, which are of course more expensive, so that you don't have to worry about printing/binding/etc.

So, now that I got the logistics of what the curriculum is and how it works out of the way, you are probably wondering what I thought of it, huh? I am going to list my thoughts on this in a pro/con order to make it easier for you to read.

PROS
*Cost, for sure is a pro, at $34 a year for a FULL curriculum, you really can't find much better than that!
*It's all laid out for you, not much planning at all on the teacher/parent part.
*The pages are colorful (which means that they will hold the interest of a child better), but not so overpowering that they take away of the content of the pages.
*It's easy, meaning easy to understand, easy to maneuver through for the kids, and easy for the parent to help the child out.

CONS
*The printing...For me, I would much rather pay the extra cost and have it sent to me already printed in color, ready for us to use. It's not worth it to me to receive the downloads, print, bind, yada, yada, yada...

That's really the only 'con', but it's truly not a con as It can be ordered in printed form. It was just a con for me, as I had the downloads :)

Now, We are HUGE fans of the math curriculum that we use which is a mastery program just like Math Mammoth is, and we don't intend to switch after this review, but I will definitely be taking advantage of the Blue Series when Twinkle Toes is struggling in certain areas.

Some might think that there are a lot of worksheets/pages to this curriculum and think it might be too much busy work, but that is what we have in our curriculum now, and what she is used to doing, so that certainly wasn't an issue for us. I do know that a lot of homeschoolers try to steer clear of worksheets, so I did want to mention that to you. If you go playing on the Math Mammoth website, you will find that they have videos about the curriculum, how it works, and lots of answers to questions that you may have.

Curious what the other thought of Math Mammoth? You can head on over to the Mosaic Review page and read all of the other reviewers blogs too!

Saturday, August 10, 2013

Are you new to homeschooling or thinking about homeschooling? If so, this post if for YOU!

I remember when I first decided to homeschool (well, not when I FIRST did, as that was before I ever had any children) but when I decided to definitely homeschool my daughter I was so nervous. Millions of questions were running through my head.

What curriculum would I use?
Am I qualified enough to teach her?
What if I screw up?
Will I homeschool through high school, or just for a few years?
How will she have any friends?
What will others think of me?
What if I screw up? (yep that one came in my mind a LOT)
Will she be accepted into college as a homeschooler?
Will she be able to function in society?

Do you remember these types of questions when you were pregnant or adopting? I do. I was worried that I would mess up, do something wrong, etc. Then my precious little girl was born and everything just came naturally for me. I was concerned I wouldn't be able to breastfeed and I did it, it was hard and took a lot of patience and pain, but we did it. Potty Training, stressful at times, hard, but we did it! Terrible two's? We had terrible 4's instead, and boy was it rough, but we made it through it.

What I am saying in all of this is that we are always going to be concerned about everything when raising our children. I dread "the talk" already, I dread her driving, I dread dating (ya know when she's 30), I dread her going off to college...I don't really dread all of these things, but am worried about all of them, honestly I love seeing my little girl growing up and slowly becoming the wonderful woman that she will be one day. It's our jobs as parents to instill lifelong manners and good traits into our children. I look forward to seeing my daughter get married, have children and live her life. I try my best to raise her to be the best person that she can be, and to be herself! Am I worried about everything? Yep! But I know that I am the best person to be her parent and to guide her and mold her and prepare her for life, so it only seems natural that I should be her teacher. During these crucial ages where she learns who she is, shouldn't I have her here where she isn't influenced by bad things in the world? Shouldn't I have her here to teach her that she is beautiful? Shouldn't I have her here to teach her in a Christian environment and let her learn about our Lord in all that she does? She will have plenty of years to be influenced by the world.

You are the parent, there is no better teacher for your child than you. If you are considering homeschooling, then you already know you can do it, you just have to get your heart and brain on the same page. I still worry at times, but I know that I have made the best decision for our daughter and for our family.

Proverbs 22:6 tells us to "Teach your child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." This is my favorite Bible verse, I quote it several times a week in my house, whether it's encouraging a new mom, someone thinking of homeschooling, or to remind myself.

If you are still feeling overwhelmed and not sure if you can do this, my second favorite Bible verse, in Philippians tells you that you can! Philippians 4:13 tells us that "We can do ALL things in Christ who gives us strength".

You are a wonderful parent, and if God is leading you towards homeschooling, you can do it!

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

For this review I got to review the Ancient History go fish game by The Classical Historian. Inside this one set of cards is four games; Go Fish, Collect the Cards, Continents, and Chronology. Go Fish is the only game that we played for our kiddos age, she is 9, and we have not started to learn Ancient History in our Homeschool yet. This game was a wonderful way to start a gentle approach to learning about Ancient History. I was amazed at the amount of information on these cards. From The Classical Historian website they say "This one deck of 50 cards with the answer key teaches the following skills through four fun games: Basic historical facts, Chronology, Geography, Association, and Social Skills required to follow the rules and play games with others. "

John De Gree is the founder of this company, The Classical Historian, who along with his wife homeschool their 7 children. They created this game from wanting to find something to incorporate games into their education. (Who doesn't love to have fun while learning?!?!)

We had a blast paying Go Fish Ancient History after dinner each night at the dining room table, our daughter loved learning about Native American Homes the most and from the cards she wanted to learn about Pueblos. So this fun game sparked a learning adventure for us to learn more about Pueblos!

The Classical Historian provides history curriculum for preschool through 12th grade. They have memory games all the way to complete history curriculum for 6th through 12th grades.

You can pick up Ancient History go fish from The Classical Historian for only $11.95, that's a pretty good price if you ask me!! They also offer the go fish game in Medieval History and American History for the same low price!

I look forward to when we get further into our study of history in our Homeschool, and think that this is a product that we will definitely be using in the future!

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

How Do We Know God Is Really There? is a children's book that is great to read when our children ask that exact question, as parents we've all had the question. Twinkle Toes has asked this question, or those similar to it, many times. I always answer her openly and honestly but never really feel like she 'got it', until reading this book. Hebrews 11:1 tells us 'Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see."

When we first got this book in the mail, we opened it and she immediately read the book to me while sitting on the floor next to me while I was working. The story starts out with Thomas (the main character) and his father getting ready for their nightly routine. Every night they get their flashlights and go out to the tree house that they built together, but this night was special, Thomas's dad was bringing his telescope and they were going to get to see Saturn's rings tonight! The story continues to go on about how sometimes you can't see something, but it is there.

This story is written out so nicely that it's really for any age child, Twinkle Toes is 9 years old and she loves this book, we've read it quite a few times and the story gets better and better each time, and each time we read it we get to discuss it further, I can also see that young children and toddlers would enjoy having this book read to them.

How Do We Know God Is Really There? by Melissa Cain Travis, illustrated by Christopher Voss is available to purchase from Apologia for $16, and according to Apologia this is only the first of a series of books in this collection! At $16 you may feel that this is a bit steep for a children's book, however I am looking at this book not only as a children's book, but as a wonderful book to keep in my resource library, it's that good!I love the last sentence of the book, Psalms 19:1 "The heavens declare the glory of God and the skies proclaim the work of His hands."

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

My Home School Grades is a grade tracking software to keep track of your children's grades over the years.

A few things that I love about this software...

*The company was created by a homeschool dad and a recent homeschool college graduate, how awesome is that! These guys certainly know what we need and don't need when it comes to grade keeping!

*There is a lot of preloaded curriculum in the system to pick from to make adding grades easier, or you can add your own if it's not in there. (they are still adding new curriculum all the time).

*You have many options to makes this work for your family, my favorite is the Pass/fail option. For instance, since my daughter is only in 3rd grade we don't specifically need a number grade, so for science and history we simply use the pass/ fail option.

*Have a high schooler? Need a transcript? No problem! My Home School Grades has made that easy and effortless for you!! It's really just as simple as the click of a button! When you enter your courses you can pick if they are credit courses and how many credits each of them are.

(I guess I'm way beyond "a few" things I love, huh??)

* Not only can you enter your child's work from this year forward, you can enter past years as well!! As you can see in the picture below, I have put in our grades for all of the 2012/2013 school year and am starting to get our 2013/2014 school year planned out!!

*For one price you get this software for all of your children, so whether you have one child or 10 you pay the same price!! I think this is a great price for one child, so I can only imagine the savings with multiple children. You can sign up for a free 14 day trial to see how you like it before purchasing it!

*The cost is only $49.95 for a LIFETIME membership to includes all updates, how awesome is that?!?!

*wondering if this will work on your computer, iPad, android, Mac, etc? Have no fear, My Home School Grades has thought of that, my dear! (It's almost midnight as I type this, I have to show my sense of humor off sometimes). This program will work on all platforms that I have seen so far! I use it on my iPad and on my windows PC and it works great on both!

*when adding grades, this software will do the math for you!! If you put the grade in as a fraction, example...13/15 the software will then change it to the correct number grade for you!! If you are like me, you probably have a big smile on your face knowing that's one little thing you won't have to worry about!!

*My Homeschool Grades offers many video tutorials to make using their software so easy!

I don't have anything bad to say about this program, it is really perfect just how it is! Simple, affordable, and created for Homeschooling families, I couldn't have asked for more!

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About Me

I am Vickey, I have been very happily married to my amazing husband, Daniel, for almost 14 years. We have one daughter, Twinkle Toes, who is 11 years old. We are on our 6th year of homeschooling, Twinkle Toes is in 5th grade. Homeschooling has been challenging, rewarding and a huge Blessing for our family. I work from home for a Medical Transcription company and homeschool full time. I have a pretty busy life but wouldn't change it for the world.